Context:

Key Concepts:

What is God's righteousness observed doing?:

for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame kjv@Hebrews:12:2

Did not bring Jesus down from cross to prove self in the way that the Jews tempted Him to.

What does this tell us about God's righteousness?:

The objective is to be the "author" and "finisher" of our faith. Saving and trans-formative faith is not something we manufacture nor muster up on our own, it is a gift, a measure given. The faith we make up is faith as we want it to be. The faith that HE gifts us is not so much what we want it to be, but as HE needs it to be. It is faith first and foremost in the ultimate righteous act performed for our salvation between Father and Son; the act being performed now upon the cross that will continue in His resurrection then ascension. This righteous act is not being performed in pity for us, it is for the joy set before Him, two entirely different things.

Despising the shame is the part that few if any of us fully understand. We can personalize it and put it in terms that we acknowledge to have caused, but do we actually acknowledge all that each of us have brought upon Him to suffer? And if not in each of our individual senses,how far off are we off in the consideration of what we have caused as a whole? Upon a Holy God of most holy name and error-less moral character, shame such as to be utterly despised? Can any of us even imagine it? To add further to it each day we deny that it didn't happen or that it didn't happen because of us? One can say "well I did not do or know nor did I mean to cause this" as if that makes any difference to what has been done and endured by Him. One can say this and in the very same utterance continue the path all the more. One may not have known or been aware, but now they are and the self performed sentence falls hard just the same.

How is man reacting?:

There are different echos of the things that reviled (revile still) men most about Jesus. "KING OF THE JEWS" certainly was hefty enough to be used by Pilate as a slap against the Jews; that was something they themselves brought up and has root back to the wise men before Herod. There was also the "destroy this temple" misquote. Much of this accusation was left unproven and inconsistent at the earlier trial, but they still haven't got past it yet. There was also the insincere attitude of the priests that He still could come down from that cross to somehow prove Himself (such proof however would be temptation direct from Satan if followed by Him). Therefore the echos still being heard are echos largely of their own manufacturing.

Notes:

Rufus is likely the same as kjv@Romans:16:13. Mark mentions he and his brother Alexander as if his readers would have known them. Cyrene (Tripoli) is a place of much early church activity kjv@Acts:2:10 with outreach noted even to Antioch kjv@Acts:11:20. The Lord is seen working in mysterious ways that even connect to the future of His collective body.

We are each one to bear his cross kjv@Luke:14:27. We take that typically to mean our cross (as in our burdens or labors), in Simon we see it to be His cross as carried by Him alongside of Him as He performs His perfect act of righteousness. It had very little to do with whatever Simon had set himself to do or felt about that day other than this now was what he was under orders to do. It was an imposition to whatever else Simon had that hour or so to get done; and he still afterwards had to get it done before his family's/synagogue's Sabbath. The cross you are bearing for today, is it your cross or the Lord's?

kjv@Exodus:30:23 myrrh is the principal ingredient in the holy anointing oil, given by the wise men as a spice to Jesus as an infant, symbolizing His death and embalming kjv@John:19:39. It is refused here because mixed with vinegar and it would have lessened/drugged His physical pain and anguish. It might also increase His thirst and prolong His death into the time frame that His bones would hurriedly have to be broken in the storm to expedite His death to before dusk (Sabbath). Prophecy makes special point that no bone will be broken even though His tongue cleaves to His very jaw. Righteousness demands that no pain be lessened in the receiving of it's full penalty. Jesus is fully conscious and willingly making decisions that are fighting against the continued onslaught of temptations.

Jesus' right and left hand had been asked of by John and James and their mother kjv@Mark:10:37 and it was not Jesus' decision to give kjv@Mark:10:40. We know what sense it had been asked in, but it is also interesting in the sense whom Jesus was crucified with was not His to select either.

Key Messages:

What does this say about our present condition?

We are of the mind that we know about what is right and what is needed to be done. From that we reject the course the Lord instead takes from early on or else we think to advise the Lord. It is something rather that we know little or anything about. Certain things as we would want them are not righteous at all and hold little if any answer to the condition we hold ourselves under.

Life changing moments rarely are simply a light bulb going on intellectually in our brains; not for the one who encounters them and not for the unknown hundreds they later influence. It can just as likely be viewed as a serious imposition to the course we've all ready undertaken, the burden suddenly and from no where expected forced upon you. The intellectual part may not have come for years for Simon, but the event of one day had it's mark. The mark may have a been a scar that he didn't know how to process at first. We can only imagine the memories of that day that haunted him perhaps like no other thereafter day and night. But the effect that it had shows in the mention of the sons of Simon everyone of that early church would have known and the making of a distant community and influential believers on the tip of Africa, his homeland.